Tune in to Focus Carolina during morning, noon and evening drive times and on the weekends to hear stories from faculty members at UNC and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Focus Carolina is an exclusive program on 97.9 The Hill WCHL, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lisa Carey, one of the world’s leading experts in breast cancer research and division of oncology deputy director of clinical sciences at Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, works every day to better understand the mechanisms of cancer development and find new treatment options for patients.
At the UNC School of Medicine and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Carey examines different subtypes of breast cancer, evaluates new drugs and studies tumor characteristics that predict the response to therapy. Her work focuses on tailoring and optimizing the type and amount of therapy patients receive.
“We really have a culture where people are expected to collaborate from a research standpoint, to try and understand what each other are doing and how that might help,” said Carey. “I’m living in the clinical realm, and so I take care of patients … All of them have clinical challenges that I know very well, and it’s expected and appropriate, a cultural norm at UNC, for me to find out and learn from and know what the scientists working in this arena are doing. Because if they’re doing something that’s actually really interesting and might be ready to be tested in the clinic and might help my patients, I want to be part of accelerating that.”
With an estimated quarter-million women in the United States diagnosed with breast cancer every year, finding new methodologies for early detection and better treatment is a crucial pursuit. Thanks to ongoing research and implementation, the likelihood of dying from the disease has dropped roughly 40 percent over the last two decades, according to Carey.
Some specific varieties of breast cancer present more threat than others, however, and that’s where more specific research provides results with significant weight.
“HER2 positive breast cancer, which was our worst prognosis kind of breast cancer, is now one of our best prognosis kinds of breast cancer simply because of the advent of not just one, but several really effective anti-HER2 drugs,” Carey said.
Dr. Carey has worked extensively with scientists across Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Gillings School of Global Public Health to better understand and characterize the molecular subtypes of breast cancer so that prevention and treatment strategies can be developed.
“Our school of public health is famous for a reason,” said Carey. “They do amazing work with how breast cancer and other cancers are experienced by people across the state … We have people being cared for with breast cancer, all across the state at UNC affiliates, we all have the same medical record system. So it’s easy for us to communicate with each other and, and we try and help each other as much as we can.”
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